Another Angel
by Your Angel of Music
Summary: Kay based one shot: Set before Christine Daae visited Erik for the final time. Erik is on the verge of suicide...until he is visited by a strange creature. An angel perhaps? Rated T, just to be on the safe side


**_Another Angel_**

**__**

"You know she will not come, Daroga," Erik said wearily, the statement directed at the dark man standing in the doorway. His heart ached, sending jolts of pain through his body; the pain came from both the sorrow and the illness. Nadir, the Persian, crossed his arms slightly and leant against the wooden doorframe.

"You also know she is a girl of her word Erik," he retorted calmly. "You said it yourself when you appeared, weeping on my doorstep. "She is a good girl", you wept as you told of how you cried at her feet…"

"You are nothing but a romantic old fool," Erik snapped, causing a jolt of pain to explode from his heart.

"This from the lips of a man who thought he could woo the girl he desired through music alone?"

"I may be dying, my dear Daroga, but I still have a torture chamber at my disposal should I still wish to use it."

Nadir took this warning; he had known the so called Angel of Music for many a year, and he knew that that black humour of his was always tinged with dreadful sincerity. He doubted the tortured creature in front of him would hesitate to send the only friend he had ever had to the cruellest death possible. He nodded, ducking out of the room with an urgency he saved only when it came to departing Erik's company.

As the door clicked shut behind the Persian, Erik rose from the chair in which he had been sitting, his fist clenched just above his heart. He knew that the boy would not allow Christine back; the boy had a logical mind and he would use it to protect his love from any danger. That the dear Viscount believed Erik could ever harm someone so precious to him as Christine, Erik did not know. To harm her, in Erik's mind, would merit a punishment worth than death.

Reaching a cabinet mounted on the stone wall, he retrieved a small key from the folds of his evening dress and slotted it in the lock. This was a course of action he had imagine taking many times during his years as the Opera Ghost, but now that it was upon he wondered whether he had the strength to do it. Yes he was dying, slowly and painfully, and every fibre of his being knew that Christine would not come. It was as clear as day, something that, he admitted, he had not seen much of, that there was not much left for him to live for. And therefore, he reasoned, it would be sensible for him to finish it quickly.

He found the small glass vial quickly, tipping it slightly to one side and watching the liquid inside move around eerily. It would be quick and virtually painless; he had every faith in Persian poison. He used his spare hand to pull the cork from the top of the bottle, braced to swallow it in one gulp…when the entire room appeared to be bathed in an eerie glow.

He turned quickly, almost dropping the bottle but steadying himself in the last second. This was the only one he had and it had been in his possession for years, waiting for this moment. He couldn't destroy it now. Ignoring the strange glow that now filled the entire room, he removed his mask and tilted his head back, ready to take the deadly potion between his twisted lips.

"Don't," a small, whispery and somewhat ethereal voice floated through the air towards him. He turned again, this time spilling a little of the poultice onto the hard stone floor. He cursed violently, corking the bottle again and placing it on the side so that he would not destroy the whole thing. As he looked up, he saw standing before him a child, bathed in a warm glow; her hair spilled over her shoulders in golden curls and her eyes were the most piercing yellow orbs she had ever seen. And she was smiling.

"What are you doing here?" he snarled, fighting back the initial overwhelming shock. "And who are you?" The child, no more than twelve years old smiled a dreamy smile and indicated towards the potion sitting on the desk.

"You must wait," she whispered. "She will come. You will die, but not before she returns to you."

"What are you talking about?" Normally he would have no qualms about simply taking her life there and then; child or not, she was another member of the human race. What pity should he hold in his heart for them? But there was something so strange, yet so eerily familiar about this girl. She smiled again.

"I speak of love and little else. Of triumph also. I speak of the story of a boy shunned by everyone, a boy with such genius that he could have been one of the most distinguished of mankind. And yet, one look at his face and people could not accept him as one of their own, a member of their species."

"I assure you that if I needed my story retelling, I would ask for it."

"You think you are unloved and yet you are loved. So isolated from humanity did you feel, that even when love was shown to you, you did not realise that it was there."

"Please enlighten me, if you know so much about my existence so far," Erik smirked, crossing his arms. This child would not, could not name any person who had shown him an ounce of love, as he himself cold not bring any of the names to mind.

"Reza, who you gave relief to in his hour of suffering; he showed you love like you had never before known, the innocent love of a child. Before that, Giovanni, the mason, he took you in when you fled the gypsy circus after murdering the man who tried to rape you. He took you in and taught you the skills of his trade."

"He threw me from his life!" Erik spat, silenced almost immediately as the child held his gaze fiercely.

"You ran from his life. You presumed, and as a result of your assumption that he would cast you from his side you fled. Before that, when you were just a child, dear Sasha. Sasha whom you loved, Sasha who loved you, Sasha, one of the only beings you ever grieved for. Yes she was a dog, and in being a dog she does not judge by the face of a human being; in her eyes all human beings were ugly, as they are different from her. Therefore she did not judge you as most did, and you found solace with her as a child. You almost grew up feral for want of the love of a mother."

"You say I have been loved, and yet surely the only love that matters is the love of a mother, and I was denied that."

"If you had stayed one more night you would have discovered that she did love you," the child sighed dreamily, a far away look in her eyes. "That night when she refused the proposal of the man who loved her, she planned to change things around for the better. She vowed that night that when morning came she would start anew, love you as she should have loved you from birth, yet when she came for you as dawn broke, you had left."

"I am supposed to believe that? This from the mouth of a child and nothing more?"

"Yes, you should believe me. But if you do not, then I bid you do not change your views simply because I have told you otherwise. But I must make you believe now that another loves you, someone whom you have loved in return. And I tell you that she will return to you, and you must wait for your death to come, instead of taking it before she returns."

Erik gasped, memories of the night she swore to be his living bride flooding back to him. He pushed them away roughly.

"If you mean Christine, then you are almost certainly wrong. She doesn't…"

"The one you love will return this night," she interrupted. "And in eight months time a child will be born into the ancient de Chagny line, and yet the child will have no noble blood running in its veins. Instead, he shall have the blood of a genius." She cocked her head and smiled. "And thus there shall be no death here tonight."

"And I am to believe you are an angel sent from heaven?" Erik mocked the child, willing her perfect smile to shatter with contempt, or hurt, or anger, or any human emotion. But instead she held that blank smile that she had worn the whole time, taking a step further. The light emanating from her almost blinded the Angel of Music; he was not used to such intensity of light.

"That very much depends on what you conceive an angel to be," she replied wistfully, her golden eyes boring straight into his own. "If you perceive and angel to be one who died long ago and ascended to heaven, then I am no angel. I am not yet born. And my fate, whether or not I be born, is in your hands Tonight it is your choice, for fate is simply a toy that can be played with."

Even a mind like Erik's, the mind of the Angel of Music, found it difficult to digest such information, and he stood in silence for some time. The words rolled around violently in his head, triggering thought after thought, but he could not catch any of the answers quickly enough to string them together. He cast a quick glance at the golden haired child once more, suddenly noting how she did not look upon his exposed face with disgust or hatred. It was more a look of; indifference.

"Who are you?" he managed, awed by the sheer power of her presence, even thought she did seem so young. Her smile widened into a childish grin, not dreamy any longer but human.

"If you like I am just another Angel, sent to guide the Angel of Music," suddenly she stepped forward and brushed her lips against his cheek lightly. Her touch was strange, warm yet cold at the same time. She stepped back.

"Touched by an Angel you now are, and thus you shall not go to hell as you have always believed. Instead you shall be reunited with the one you love, firstly tonight and secondly when she ascends to heaven to be by your side." She smiled by way of farewell, and the light in the room shrank until it was as dark as it had ever been.

After her presensce had completely disappeared from the room, Erik's mind was left in complete and utter turmoil. He did not know which way to turn, which directing to take, which thought to cast aside and which to pluck out as worthwhile. The words of the strange creature had hit him where it hurt most; his heart, deep inside his very soul.

Glancing to the side, he saw before him the glass vial on the table, filled with the liquid that had not so long ago seemed beautiful an escape; but which now seemed ugly, fiery as if straight from the depths of hell. How easy it would be to simply drink it down and die quickly, let it end now. But the damned girl had given him some hope. He felt foolish. He did not even know whether she was real, or whether in his pain and madness he had simply hallucinated. But she had instilled an uncertainty that could not go away. Before he could think rationally, his hand swept across the desk, pushing the bottle to the floor. The glass, and the poison was absorbed quickly by the Persian rug that lay there.

A knock on the door woke Erik from his troubled reverie.

"What is it now?" he snapped irritably as Nadir pushed open the door. Erik's heart leapt as he saw the Angel that stood behind him.

"Erik, Christine Daae is here."

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_On the fourteenth of July, 1907, a baby daughter was born to Charles, the Count de Chagny, and his wife, the Countess Adèle. The baby possessed golden locks and shocking yellow eyes the seemed to burn with a hidden fire inside. The child was named Angelique Harmony Chagny._


End file.
